My essay focuses on the period between approximately 1875 and 1914 which saw many publications for young readers featuring King Arthur, Beowulf, King Alfred and other medieval heroes. Although children had been given medieval folktales, myths, and legends to read before this time — usually in drastically reduced, inexpensive chapbook versions — these tales were not generally seen as meriting serious attention. Samuel Johnson’s attitude in the 18th century is typical when he comments on the Middle Ages: “at the time when very wild and improbable tales were well received, the people were in a barbarous state, and so on the footing of children” (see essay, p. 210). In other words, the idea of an uncivilized, child-like medieval era has a long history.

…at the time when very wild and improbable tales were well received, the people were in a barbarous state, and so on the footing of children.

(Samuel Johnson)

H.E. Marshall. 1908

What changed in the 19th century, however, was the value and interest that the medieval period held for scholars and general readers. In my essay, I discuss how imperial interests and racial politics, along with the study of national origins in Indo-European languages and in evolutionary anthropology, combine to create a widespread interest in the idea of progress from medieval and/or primitive origins. The evolutionary theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (i.e. the stages of development in the individual recapitulate or repeat phylogeny, the states of evolutionary development of the human) meant that children could stand in for cultural “primitives” as objects of study. Andrew Lang in his series of fairy tale books did much to popularize this notion of the child as a representative of an earlier stage of human development.

The children to whom and for whom [fairy tales] are told represent the young age of man.

(Andrew Lang, Introduction, Blue Fairy Book)

To illustrate how a child could represent the evolutionary progress of a nation, I comment on a serialized story, “Progress of the British Boy: Past and Present,” published in the periodical Boys of the Empire in 1888. The illustration accompanying the article wasn’t published with my essay, so I provide it here:

…as the ‘boy is the father of the man,’ it may not be amiss to draw the attention of our young readers to the boyhood, if we may so term it, of England…

(Edwin J. Brett, “Progress of the British Boy” Boys of the Empire no. 1, p. 12)

As I state in my essay: “These children’s periodicals, schoolbooks, and anthologies demonstrate a conflation of ideas about the child and the medieval through a primitivist and evolutionary discourse, which often determined the kind of reading material that would be given to children” (218). You can read the entire essay if you’re interested in the details of my discussion and in my examples of various texts. I’ll just reprint here part of my concluding paragraph:

…one may well question what effect the persistent association of the child and the primitive with the medieval has had on the contemporary status of medieval literature. Even today, if someone were to ask for stories of King Arthur or Robin Hood, it is likely that most people would assume that simple children’s stories or at least stories that appealed to adolescent tastes were being requested — in other words, literature that is not as complex or as serious as that typically defined as modern, adult literature. Medievalists, of course, know better, but in order to understand clearly how medieval studies developed to this point, it is important to recognize the conflation of the child, the primitive, and the medieval in the disciplinary formations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That intersection is perhaps most evident to us when we examine the particular kind of medieval hero presented to us in texts from this time, an exemplar of the nation and the race, who reveals to us quite sharply the primitivist and evolutionary foundations on which he was constructed.

*Medievalists will know George Clark mainly from his work on the Old English poems The Battle of Maldon and Beowulf. Tolkienists might recognize him as the author of “J.R.R. Tolkien and the True Hero” published in the book that he co-edited with Daniel Timmons, J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances, Greenwood Press. The Hero Recovered includes an interview conducted by Daniel Timmons with George Clark on heroism in Tolkien’s work and in Old Norse literature.

As I indicated in a previous entry, I wanted to post some of the images that I used when delivering my Tolkien 2005 conference paper. That paper (without the images) is included in the proceedings now on sale by the Tolkien Society.

Back in 2005, my presentation, “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, The First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” discussed the Frodo and Sam relationship in both medieval and modern contexts. I wanted to show that a tradition of male friendship, especially in war, stretches far back in time.

For example, just as Roland has his Oliver in the Song of Roland (here pictured in a 14th-century manuscript):

and Beowulf has his Wiglaf (by J.H.F. Bacon, c. 1910):

so too, Frodo has his Sam:

While I wanted to show how a tradition of male friendship can be traced back to the early medieval period (and I could have gone beyond that, of course, but I only had 20 minutes for my talk!), I also tried to place the Frodo-Sam relationship in a modern and contemporary context. I looked at the nature of World War One friendships, then at how Peter Jackson had portrayed Frodo and Sam in his films, and finally at how subsequent fanfic writers have generally represented the two.

But as I was thinking about the medievalized elements in Frodo and Sam’s friendship, I was struck by one moment in Return of the King when the two of them are near the end of their climb up Mount Doom. Consider this passage:

‘Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it.’ Sam took his master’s hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own.

At this point, Frodo and Sam are very close to the end of their climb. As the Eye moves to gaze at the Captains of the West, Frodo falls to the ground as if he’s “stricken mortally.” Sam is kneeling beside him. Of course, it’s completely natural for Frodo to ask Sam to hold his hand to keep it from reaching for the Ring around his neck. And it’s quite in keeping with Sam’s previous attempts to comfort his Master by holding his hands, as he does several times before this in various situations.

But the specific actions that are described here are also reminiscent of the medieval ceremony in which a vassal pays homage to a lord. Typically, the vassal places himself in a lower position than his lord by kneeling before him. He offers his hands in a prayer gesture, palm to palm, to his lord, who places his own hands over them as a sign that he will offer protection to his vassal.

From a 12th-century manuscript. Act of homage

On Mount Doom, Frodo is in the lower position on the ground and Sam is kneeling above him. Frodo offers his hands as a vassal would do, and Sam takes them between his own, as if he were the superior in the relationship. I find this reversal very telling. Sam has always directed his loyalty to his “Master,” acting as his servant. Now, Frodo is acknowledging Sam’s leadership role by putting himself into Sam’s hands, both literally and symbolically. He is becoming Sam’s man, as if he were a vassal pledging himself to a lord.

This reversal only acknowledges what has already happened in the story by this point. Sam has increasingly taken the lead in their journey and made decisions for both of them in his effort to protect Frodo.

The ceremony of homage between vassal and lord existed in many European countries and over centuries in the medieval period, so it should not be surprising that variations occurred. In my 2005 article, I interpreted the scene in the light of one of these versions, in which a vassal kisses his lord’s hands in the ceremony. Because it’s Sam who kisses the clasped pair of hands, I had read that as a sign of “a reciprocal exchange in which Frodo acknowledges the need for Sam’s leadership and protection, and Sam acknowledges his willingness to be both vassal and lord” (324). Since writing this, though, I’ve read that in some instances the lord did kiss the vassal’s hands and in others, the kiss did not occur until an oath of fealty was sworn after the homage ritual. In any case, some historians do point out that the ceremony of vassalage created a reciprocal relationship between the two parties, with equal demands on both sides.

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth 1969.

However we interpret the details, I can’t help but see the basic homage ritual (hands clasped together and enfolded in another person’s hands) as reflected in this moment between Frodo and Sam. In that light, the scene looks forward to the time when Sam will become the Master of Bag End; in fact, to me it makes that conclusion seem inevitable.

Bibliography

The original article in the 2005 proceedings did not have a bibliography attached. For the sake of completion, you can look at the Works Cited list here [pdf].

It’s hard to believe that the Tolkien 2005 conference — The Ring Goes Ever On — was held ten years ago at Aston University in the UK. Looking over the list of participants in the mammoth proceedings published after the event, I see names of people I had met just a little while before; some that I had known or followed online for a few years; and others I had yet to meet in the coming years. (Do I sound like I’m looking into Galadriel’s mirror?). The event, co-sponsored by the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society, packed into five days an enormous number of presentations and activities.

It was difficult deciding which papers to go to, and sometimes the rooms were so full that people had to be turned away. I remember a few highlights: having Priscilla Tolkien herself open the event by wishing that “a star would shine upon our meeting.” Getting the opportunity to tell Alan Lee that I loved his design of Meduseld. Discovering some of my favorite fanfic authors and having the opportunity to talk to them. Going to a Q & A with Priscilla Tolkien. Listening to presentations by scholars such as Tom Shippey, John Garth, Ian Hunter (all of whom spoke to huge audiences; Ian’s talk on Lord of the Rings porn parodies was certainly an eye-opener!). Meeting up with some of my TORnsibs.

But I digress. The point of this post is to help the Tolkien Society announce that the proceedings of the conference are now on sale for 10 British pounds (approximately $20 Canadian and $15 US). So if you couldn’t be there, or if you were and would like a record of the event, this is your chance to get the enormous two-volume proceedings, with nearly 100 articles, at this discount price. Go to the Tolkien Society offer here for more details. A full list of contents is available at the Tolkien Gateway site.

My presentation, “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, the First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings” is included in Volume 1. Here is a summary of what I discuss in that article:

My paper explores continuities in the institution of male friendship from the Middle
Ages to the First World War and then looks at contemporary explorations and understandings of the central male friendship in The Lord of the Rings, that of Frodo and Sam. I look at some examples of medieval forerunners before examining the nature of male friendship in World War One through the perspectives of critics such as Sarah Cole, Santanu Das, Joanna Bourke, and Allen Frantzen. I focus my discussion ofThe Lord of the Rings on the Cirith Ungol scene, in which Frodo and Sam sleep together, and on the Mount Doom scene, in which Frodo asks Sam to hold his hands, a gesture that I argue mimics the medieval ritual of swearing fealty to a lord. I then examine the contemporary reception of the Frodo – Sam relationship in the Peter Jackson films and in reactions to them. I conclude by considering slash fan fiction and its version of male friendship.

In the next few days, I’ll post some of the illustrations that I used when I gave my talk, and I’ll write a little bit more about Tolkien’s adaptation of the medieval ritual of homage.

Of course, my article is only a small part of a very large collection that could keep you reading Tolkien essays for some time. Go to the Tolkien Society website to order!